Tonight’s story depicts a legendary ritual known as “the shrine visit at the hour of the ox.” This ritual is famous today for being a curse ritual. It is performed by jealous or jilted lovers who want revenge — either against the former lover who betrayed them, or against the person who stole their lover from them. The hashi hime of Uji, Kyoto is a famous example of someone who used this ritual to powerful effect.
To perform this ritual, one dresses up like a ghost: wearing a white burial kimono, and carrying a light source on their head (usually in the form of candles stuck onto an upside-down trivet, or holding a torch in their mouth), and wearing tall geta sandals. The ritual is performed at the hour of the ox, which equates to between 1 to 3 am in western time.
While this ritual is known today as being a curse ritual, long ago it wasn’t restricted to curses. The shrine visit at the hour of the ox was originally performed for very strong, sincere wishes, like the one we see in the story below. For an extra powerful dose of magic, you can perform it during the year of the ox, during the month of the ox, on the day of the ox, and at the hour of the ox — but you’d have to have time on your side to get such a perfect line up.
The Woman Who Every Night Visited Usa Hachiman in Buzen Province
In Buzen Province, about 2 kilometers north of Usa Hachiman-gu Shrine, there is a mausoleum. There is a rumor that a henge comes here every night. One night, a group of young men gathered there and asked, “Who wants to go and see it?”
But not one of them said they were willing to go. Among them was a brave samurai who said, “I will go,” and, boasting about his courage, went off to the mausoleum all by himself. He sat in the shadow of some trees and waited for the henge to arrive.
It was dark and rainy, and it could not have been any more creepy. Just then, he saw a faint light floating towards him from about 1 kilometer away. “Aha!” he thought, and loosened the bindings on his sword and waited for it to approach. The light grew closer until it was seven to nine meters away. Looking closer, there appeared a woman of around 20 years in a burial kimono, her disheveled hair reaching all the way to the ground, wearing an iron trivet with candles on it on her head and tall wooden sandals on her feet.
The samurai thought he would cut her down and discard the body, but then he remembered that he was here to investigate, so he waited off to the side and observed. The woman entered the crematorium, burned something for a while in the embers, then came out and went back to the road to leave.
The samurai wondered what she was up to and went to stop her. He grabbed her tightly from behind, and the woman said, “Oh how sad… now my wish will not come true.”
The samurai was startled, and said, “So, you are human! Tell me what you are doing!”
The woman replied, “I am ashamed to say this, but my husband, due to some karmic causality, has been suffering from a horrible illness, and all treatments have had no effect. In my grief, I fasted in prayer at Usa Hachiman-gu for seven days. At dawn on the seventh day, Lord Hachiman appeared to me in a dream and instructed me: ‘For one thousand days, at the hour of the ox, go to the graveyard and eat mochi baked in the embers of the cremated dead. Your husband will then fully recover from his terrible illness.’ Since then, I have done as instructed and come to this mausoleum every night for the past three years. In four or five days my wish would have been fulfilled, but grievously it has all been in vain. Please help me. I am no monster.”
Hearing this, the samurai said, “Well, there’s no mistake; you are a human. I will help you. But first, to prove to everyone that I was here…” And he grabbed a fistful of the woman’s hair and cut it off.
Then he went back to the inn and told everyone, “I captured the henge and subdued it, then in exchange for its life, I cut its hair and came back here.” And he threw the fistful of hair at them, and they were all amazed.
